


I'd give away my wooden ears (Help you teach your frozen lips to speak)

by naivesilver



Series: You're as careless as me (But time could never fight us) - Wish!Realm Emma&Pinocchio Fics [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Baby Emma Swan, Brother-Sister Relationships, Childhood Friends, Fluff, Gen, Insecurity, Kid Fic, POV Child, Wishverse (Once Upon a Time), all very vague and filtered but pinocchio's got a fucked up backstory, even more so if you're going by literally any version but the disney one, mentions of past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27804805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naivesilver/pseuds/naivesilver
Summary: Princess Emma’s face is scrunched up like a dry plum, but she seems to stop whining as Pinocchio stares down at her, looking up at him with big, round eyes. Father told him a great many things about babies when they heard the princess had been born, and among them was the fact that babies can’t see very far for the first few months, so perhaps she didn’t really notice him, and was just startled by the noises he made.He smiles at her nevertheless, because it seems a nice thing to do.Pinocchio sneaks out to meet the new addition to the royal family and gets more than he bargained for.
Relationships: Pinocchio | August Booth & Emma Swan
Series: You're as careless as me (But time could never fight us) - Wish!Realm Emma&Pinocchio Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173974
Comments: 72
Kudos: 8





	I'd give away my wooden ears (Help you teach your frozen lips to speak)

Pinocchio knows he shouldn’t be here.

He shouldn’t have come anywhere close the royal apartments, truth be told. His father is friends with the king and queen, and part of their council, and that’s why he and Pinocchio have rooms and a well-lit workshop inside the castle, but it doesn’t mean Pinocchio is allowed to snoop around in their private lives.

It certainly doesn’t mean that he should be trying to sneak into a princess’ nursery.

It’s just that he’s so _curious_. He’s yet to see princess Emma from up close, but everyone speaks of her in such reverent tones that he half expects her to sprout wings and fly away from her crib, fairy dust dripping from her smock. They say she brought hope to the kingdom, and that she’ll be the light guiding them into the future, after the years they spent under the Evil Queen’s rule.

Pinocchio hopes they don’t ask that of her anytime soon. Last he saw her she seemed impossibly small, bundled in blankets in the queen’s arms, and he’s not sure it would be fair of a bunch of grown-ups to ask a baby to lead them.

And besides, it’s not like he’s planning to do anything _bad_. He just wants to look at her without any courtiers or guardsmen pushing him aside. Jiminy says he should work on his patience, and he’s been very patient all afternoon, waiting out of sight for a chance to get in the nursery without anyone noticing.

Finally, the princess’ nurse steps out of the room and hurries down the corridor, no baby in her arms, leaving the door ajar. Pinocchio waits until she’s disappeared around the corner and then slips inside, moving as quietly as he can manage and closing the door behind his back.

The nursery is much grander than he expected it to be. The walls are richly decorated, and there’s a flock of glass unicorns hanging above the crib, moving with the breeze coming in from the window. He’s never had a room like this – but then again, he’s never been a baby either. Perhaps Papa would have carved him a cradle just like Emma’s, had he been born like all the other children.

A high, piercing wail is rising from the crib, and that almost makes him turn around and leave, because he doesn’t want people to find him and think he was the one to make the princess cry. He’s in enough trouble as it is.

Eventually, though, curiosity wins over fear and he steps closer, peeking over the wooden bars.

Princess Emma’s face is scrunched up like a dry plum, but she seems to stop whining as Pinocchio stares down at her, looking up at him with big, round eyes. Father told him a great many things about babies when they heard the princess had been born, and among them was the fact that babies can’t see very far for the first few months, so perhaps she didn’t really notice him, and was just startled by the noises he made.

He smiles at her nevertheless, because it seems a nice thing to do. “Hi” he says, and then bites his tongue. Stupid. She can’t understand him, can he? The older children who always push him around when he tries to join their games would mock him endlessly, if they were here. _Look at him_ , they’d say, snickering, _trying to talk to a baby._

But the princess doesn’t start crying again, so maybe he’s not doing anything wrong. In fact, she seems to find him very interesting as he leans closer to take a better look at her, even if she probably sees nothing but fuzzy red and white shapes where his face and hair are.

Emma’s quite pretty for being a wrinkly, red-faced infant, Pinocchio thinks. Papa said all babies have grey-blue eyes to begin with, but perhaps she’s got a chance to keep hers even when she grows up, since the king has blue eyes too. And she’s got the blonde hair to go with it, golden wisps covering her head, soft like feathers on a bird. They’ll probably start saying she’s bound to turn into a beauty soon, like her mother the queen, but for now she’s just a baby, drool dripping from her mouth and onto the embroidered nightgown she’s wearing.

That’s all she is, though. A baby. Try as he might, he can’t find anything special that might explain why serving girls and knights alike walk around whispering about her, as though she were some sort of wonder. She’s got no magical air to her, no exceptional beauty or fairy wings. Even moving the blankets around doesn’t reveal any particular secret.

Pinocchio’s almost angry with them, for making him believe he’d find something special tucked away in the nursery, but he’s angrier still on Emma’s behalf. People always talk about him too, look at him like they’d look at a curious animal in a menagerie, as if he were about to turn back into wood right there and then. It’s not nice at all: it makes him feel small and scared, and he’d run for cover behind his father’s legs every time, if his father weren’t the first to stare at him like that. Papa’s scared that if he misbehaves again he’ll become a puppet once more, so his eyes follow Pinocchio everywhere, and it’s clear he doesn’t trust his son enough to treat him like a normal boy.

He doesn’t want princess Emma to feel that way. He wants her to know that not everyone thinks she’s special, or weird.

“Hi” he says again, clearly, louder than before. He doesn’t care much that the other kids would call him names anymore, and besides, he’s alone with the princess right now. He’s pretty sure she won’t tattle to anyone that he’s where he shouldn’t be, or that he’s acting strange. “I’m Pinocchio. And you look pretty normal to me. You’re very small, but that’s okay. You’ll grow up, everyone does. Even I am growing, and I wasn’t supposed to, because I was a puppet.”

He digs into his pockets then, and produces a small piece of wood, carved in the shape of a cat. It’s not very good – it probably looks ugly next to the rich presents the nobles brought for her, or even just the ornate woodworks Father gifted to the king and queen, but it felt right, to bring a gift along for Emma. Everyone else did the same thing, and he made this one by himself, without any help. He’s spent a long time watching the castle’s cats just so that he could get it right.

He hides in the blanket’s folds, tucked deep somewhere beside Emma. The maids might notice someone’s been in the nursery if he just drops it somewhere, but if they find it when they change the beddings they’ll pay it no mind, and probably think it’s just one of the myriad of toys the princess already owns. After that, he smooths back the covers, and thinks that he’d better leave soon. He’s not sure why the wet nurse left, but she wouldn’t leave the princess alone for long, even if the castle is safe now, with the Evil Queen gone forever.

He lingers a bit too long where he knows the cat is stashed away, though, because next thing he knows Emma has taken a hold of one of his fingers, squeezing it in her small, pudgy fist.

Pinocchio freezes, not knowing what to do. He can’t just tear himself away, because she’ll most certainly cry and someone will come see what’s going on, but he can’t just slip out of her grasp without her noticing either. She’s strong, stronger than he thought a baby could be, and tugs at his hand as she moves about, as if she weren’t really aware of what she’s doing.

And deep down, he’s not so sure he wants to let go. Having Emma’s hand on his makes him all warm on the inside, as if someone had come and wrapped a blanket tight around his heart. Children his age don’t go out of their way to talk to him, and he doesn’t often have the chance to see any of the younger ones, so he’s not sure if it’s good for her to do what she’s doing, but it feels right. It feels safe. He wonders if it’s what some of the pages meant, when they boasted about getting to hold their newborn siblings.

He’s still holding onto her, brushing his thumb on the paper-thin skin of her hand, when he hears the door opening behind him. He startles at the sound, tearing his hand away from Emma’s fingers, and she lets out a mewling cry at the sudden movement.

Pinocchio turns around, heart hammering in his chest, and finds Prince Charming standing on the doorstep, confusion clear on his face.

Well. _King_ Charming now, he supposes. It’s better that it’s him and not his wife the queen, because Pinocchio is more than a bit scared of the queen. The way she acts reminds him of the Blue Fairy, and he’s not sure he’d like to be caught red-handed by either of them.

(He knows the Blue Fairy made him a real boy, but sometimes he wishes he could forget all about it. He shouldn’t be so ungrateful, he really shouldn’t, but she appears in his bad dreams almost every night, transforming him back into a piece of wood because it’s what he deserves. It’s hard to look her in the eyes after dreams like those.)

The king is not so scary. He seems gentler, somehow, and as perplexed by how things go at court as Pinocchio himself feels at times, like he never thought he’d see any of it happen.

He came into the workshop once, too, while Father was out on some job. Pinocchio remembers expecting the man to leave, because he couldn’t possibly be so interesting that he might keep a king busy until Papa’s return: to his surprise, the king took a look at him and dug out a pair of wooden swords from the pile of finished works, challenging him to a mock-fight to pass the time, like the knights sometimes do with the younger squires. They played at swords until Geppetto came back, and Pinocchio can’t easily forget the fun he had, or how the king laughed with him as if he had been a normal boy and not just a woodcarver’s son.

(He can’t forget how worried Papa was when he entered the workshop, either, afraid that his son might be bothering their ruler, but that’s not something he likes to think about.)

That matters little now, though. Kind he might be, but he’s still a king, and Pinocchio is just a little boy who can’t afford to get caught being naughty. He wishes he could shrink down, turn small as a mouse and scurry away, pretend he’s anywhere but here.

King David is not nearly as nervous as he is, but then again, grown-ups rarely are. On the contrary, his mouth curls in a small smile, as if faintly amused. “Her nurse came to find me because she wouldn’t settle down, but it seems you’ve done the job already.”

“I’m sorry” Pinocchio stammers. He should run, but his feet seem rooted on the spot, and he’d have to pass beside the king to get out of the door, and if the man catches him there’ll be trouble and he _can’t_ get in trouble again. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to see her, I’ll go, I’ll…”

“Hey.” In a moment, the man has closed the distance between them and has crouched in front of him, his smile softening. “It’s alright. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

That’s not what Pinocchio had expected to hear, not in the slightest. In fact, he hesitates before answering, because it sounds too good to be true. “Really?”

“Yeah.” King David chuckles, raising a hand to ruffle his hair. “If anything, we should thank you – we thought we’d sorted out her guard weeks ago. She shouldn’t have been left alone.”

Pinocchio doubts he would have been as useful as a guardsman in full armor and with a sword, had the princess been in danger, but he says nothing. Jiminy says one shouldn’t look a gifted horse in the mouth, and though the king not being mad at him really shouldn’t count as a gift, it’s certainly better than the alternative.

Said king gets to his feet and herds him back towards the crib before picking up his daughter, cradling her in his arms. Pinocchio can’t see Emma’s face, but she doesn’t sound unhappy, judging by the excited coos and gurgles she’s making.

King David smiles down at her, and then his eyes travel back to Pinocchio. “Would you like to hold her?”

“Can I?” He asks, breathless with surprise and delight.

It’s too enthusiastic, too eager – he almost expects to be chided for it. But the king just laughs, the sound loud and reverberating in the empty nursery. “Of course.”

There’s a cushioned armchair in one of the corners, no doubt meant for the queen or a wet nurse, in case they need to rock the princess to sleep. King David leads him to sit there and then puts Emma in his arms, guiding him so that he supports her head and doesn’t let her fall.

It’s just like holding her hand, except amplified tenfold. She’s a warm, solid weight in his arms; she feels real as she didn’t look in the cradle, a heavy baby and not just a rumour in the castle’s hallways. It’s one of the best things to ever happen to him, and he hopes this is not a cruel joke on the king’s part, that the man won’t just tear her from his hands with a scoff and a dismissing wave.

He doesn’t. He just sits on his haunches beside the chair, looking silently over them both. Perhaps he’s checking if Emma will protest being held like that: but though she fusses for a moment or two, she seems to relax in his arms soon enough, her big blue eyes staring vacantly somewhere around his head, and Pinocchio can only stare back at her, mesmerized.

“What do you think of her, then?” The king says, whispering as not to startle the princess and breaking him out of his reverie.

“She’s pretty.”

“That she is. If we’re lucky, she’ll take after her mother.” The king pauses, apparently lost in thought, and then he adds: “But I thought you’d already met her, when we presented her to the realm.”

Pinocchio feels his face burn in embarrassment, and he lowers his gaze. “I wanted to” he mutters. “But there were too many people, and I couldn’t get through. I wanted to wait, but everyone kept talking about her, and they said…”

He stops, abruptly, scared he’s already said too much: King David nudges him gently, though, prompting him to go on. “And? What did they say?”

“They kept saying she was special, and that she was important for the realm. I’m sorry, I just wanted to see if it was true.” Pinocchio looks up, bracing for the worst. If he’s bound to get punished, it might as well happen now and not later, when he will least expect it.

But the king is not angry. He’s smiling again, and it looks sincere enough. “Well, they were right. She is quite special. Do you know why?”

Pinocchio shakes his head, but internally he’s all but bursting with anticipation, because finally, finally somebody’s willing to give him a straight answer. Even if it’s the king, who probably has way better things to do than regale him with tales.

“When me and the queen learned that we would be having a baby, we didn’t think we would get to watch her grow at all. We thought the Evil Queen would take everything we cared about. And yet, we defeated her. She’s gone, and we’re all here, and so’s Emma. That’s why she’s so important to everyone in our kingdom. Because no one thought any of this would be possible.”

“I heard people say that she’s brought hope to the kingdom” Pinocchio ventures, frowning slightly. “At the presentation. Is it true?”

King David nods. “That’s right. Everyone’s a little more hopeful about the future, now. I’m not saying it’s all thanks to Emma, but for many people she represents hope. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Pinocchio looks down on Emma again. She seems to have dozed off by now, her eyes closed and her breath evening, blissfully unaware that they’re talking about her. That she means so much for so many people. It’s a bizarre thought, that grown men and women would look up to her for inspiration, but it does make a bit of sense now that he’s seeing her first hand, and that the king has explained it with simple enough words.

He just prays all of those men and women will close around her to keep her warm, and not to squeeze all that the hope and love out of her before she’s grown up enough to know better.

The king seems to be thinking along the same lines, for he adds, after a moment of pondering: “You know, there will be loads of people who might want to hurt her because of the things I just said. She’ll need someone to look out for her. Do you think you would be able to help?”

“Me?” Pinocchio jolts in surprise, prompting Emma to let out a small, protesting whine. He tightens his hold on her instinctively, even as the king moves to shush her. He should apologize – he knows he oughtn’t have moved so brusquely, she’s too fragile, and he could have dropped her besides – but no words come out of his mouth.

It’s just – he hadn’t expected it, is all.

“But- but I’m not a knight” he finally stutters, daring to look the man in the eyes. “I can’t protect her that well.”

“She’ll have plenty of knights around – hell, if she’s anything like her mother, she might want to be one herself” the king says with a small chuckle. “But she’ll need a friend, once she’s gotten a bit older. Someone who’ll want to be around her because they care for her, and not because she’s a princess. And I think you’d be the right person to ask. What do you think? Would you be up for it?”

“A friend?” Pinocchio whispers in wonder. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. Look, she seems to like you already. And you’re a trustworthy boy, I can see it. I know the queen and I would leave her in capable hands.”

Pinocchio feels something flare up in his chest, warm and. It’s not just the shock of the proposal, or the usual, lingering worry that he’s missing out on some secret everyone else is sharing – there’s pride, too, at being entrusted with something so small and yet so important as Emma, when no one else has ever put so much faith in him before. That it’s the king who’s asking him to do it – that he’d want Pinocchio to be her friend, with her a princess and he just a woodcarver’s son – is just a welcome bonus, and too big a thought to even wrap around his head.

He wants to do it, though. He’s not sure he won’t botch it, but for once, the rush of excitement he feels is greater than any fear of being punished for his mistakes. He can’t wait for Emma to grow up a bit so they can play properly, and so he can show her all the nooks and crannies of a castle that’s way too big to explore on his own.

Mostly, he finds himself unable to let go of Emma as she is now, of the warm and comforting weight of her small body in his arms, and so the decision is made.

“Yes” Pinocchio says, the tentative grin on his face growing so wide he fears it’ll split his head in two. “Yes, I’d like it very much.”

**Author's Note:**

> So the long and the short of this story is that I watched the entirety of OUAT during quarantine, fell in love with that disgraceful boy that calls himself August Booth and his friendship with Emma and started writing what was supposed to be a series of works about them growing up in the Wish!Realm. Then mental health issues interfered and I abandoned this first fic, nearly finished, because I thought it sucked too much for anyone to see it.  
> I'm doing better now. When I picked it up again my mental process was pretty much "You know what? Fuck that shit", so I wrapped it up and edited it and put it out there. I'm not signaling this as the beginning of a series only because I don't want to jinx my good vibe, but I actually have plans for at least two more fics. Let's go with the flow, shall we?  
> This story in particular was meant to be a mirror of that one scene in S1 of them in foster care. Except happier. And safe. And beginning to work on some issues because that's my jam.  
> Thank you for reading this, especially if you got through my unnecessary explanations. I hope you all enjoyed the fic - stay home and be safe!  
> P.S. I apologize for the tags but I have bones to pick about the Disney Pinocchio adaptation. This might become a recurring complaint if I ever actually write sequels for this story.  
> P.P.S. Title is from Basia Bulat's song Sparrow.


End file.
